John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)

This is a technical amendment to be inserted on legal advice. It is important that the decisions of the new charities regulatory authority be separated from those of the Revenue in regard to tax matters. It is not appropriate for the new authority to have any role in such matters, which are the domain of the Minister for Finance and Revenue alone. Every charitable organisation, as well as having to have exclusively charitable purposes, must also have a public benefit. The effect of the amendment to section 7 is to remove any doubt that Revenue will be in any way bound by any determination of the authority as to whether the purpose of the organisation is of public benefit.

The amendment to section 40 is also of a technical nature. Under the existing wording, it might be interpreted that Revenue is required to provide all the information it holds for each organisation deemed to be registered under section 40. Amendment No. 27 clarifies that Revenue will only have to provide information that would normally be required of charities registering under section 39 of the Bill.